PROLOGUE

      If Jack Johnson had let James Jeffries beat him on July 4, 1910, which would have proven once and for all that a white man was ten times better than a Negro, then black folk wouldn’t have been walking around with their backs straight and chests puffed out, smiling like Cheshire cats, upsetting good, God-fearing white folk who didn’t mind seeing their Negroes happy, but didn’t like seeing them proud.

      If Jack Johnson had given up and allowed James Jeffries to clip him on the chin, which would have sent him hurling down to the floor where he could have pretended to be knocked out cold, then maybe Easter Bartlett’s father wouldn’t have twirled his wife and daughters around the house by their pinky fingers and his son John Bartlett Jr. wouldn’t have felt for the first time in his life pleased and glad to be a black man. And if Jack Johnson had let the shouts of “Kill that nigger” that rang out from the crowd unravel him or the Nevada heat irritate him, maybe then he would have lost the fight and things would have remained as they were.

      Things could have gone a different way if Jack Johnson hadn’t gotten the notion some years earlier to cap his teeth in gold, so his smile added insult to injury when he was announced the victor of the “The